


Roses Outtake

by ivorygates



Series: Roses In December [4]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: A Day In The Life At The SGC, Gen, Random Metaphysics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-05
Updated: 2013-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-18 10:56:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8159719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygates/pseuds/ivorygates
Summary: Danielle Jackson deals with the SGC's Chaplain's crisis of faith in her own way.





	

**Author's Note:**

> One of the problems with actually _finishing_ this thing is (because I write out of order much of the time) there are bits and pieces that are not going to make it into the final cut. This is one. It starts in the middle and it goes nowhere, really, but it's here because once I start posting outtakes I somehow can't stop.
> 
> Dr. Helen Crieche is one of my Stargate Repertory Company. Her only other appearance to date (so far as I remember) is in "The Widow's Walk", but I'm sure she's in the background of most of my stories. Somewhere.

#

Dani feels a moment of pure horror, and it's a phrase so clichéd that it is nearly without meaning, but it possessed one once, and that's the sense in which she means it: horror (a feeling of intense fear, anxiety, and hopelessness with overtones of the grotesque) in a form so pure it could perhaps be _essence-of-horror_ , laboratory purity, industrial strength. Helen is one of her wonks, yes, so it's easy enough to forget that Dr. Crieche (Akkadian, Babylonian, cultures of the Fertile Crescent, excellent Aramaic, for that matter, and madly in love with the Hittites) is not just PhD, but DThP. She's the SGC Chaplain. When people on the Teams come back through the Gate trying to hold onto their faith (in whichever god) when they've been mocked by snakes who played at godhood here on Earth thousands of years before, they talk to Helen.

And Helen has come to her, and at first Dani thought she was just having a rough day (they all do, even if they don't go through the Gate: Helen doesn't), but while Helen talks to her, twisting her hands in her lap, Dani realizes that Helen is here, in her office, because Helen is having a crisis of faith. And _she's come to her._ And Helen knows damned well that Dani doesn't have any religion. Never has. They don't worry too much about the whole 'dying-and-coming-back' thing, because that's just alien science, and Helen can deal with that (part of her job), but she's sitting in Dani's office now, white and pinched, and saying that she's always thought that God was there, that He had to be there, that nothing she's seen _mattered_ as an argument against faith any more than the Holocaust did. But she wonders -- now -- if she's been wrong all these years. Arrogant, and deluded, and lying to all the men and women who came to her looking for help.

And Dani has no idea what to say to somebody who believes there are invisible ghosts who watch and care about her life and the lives of other people -- invisible, all-powerful ghosts who let horrible things happen _anyway_ for mysterious reasons that they won't even explain, so that their worshippers not only have to justify the existence of evil, but explain why there's no evidence of their gods' existence. She can explain the religions of Earth back to the dawn of humanity (many of them are logical, if nothing else); she can explain a number of alien religions (the Jaffa, at least, have absolute proof of the reality of their gods). Most contemporary Earth religions baffle her. She's fairly certain that all of them are relics of _Goa'uld_ rule. That isn't what Helen needs to hear, because Dani knows damned well that Helen's on her way out of here to eat a bullet, even if she has no fucking clue _why_.

"You know damned well I don't believe in God, Helen," she says gently. "But I know that even an ethical system judges both on actions and intentions. Your intentions were good, and your actions _did_ good. They saved lives. If you want me to tell you that there's a God -- a _God_ -God -- I can't. I've never seen proof. But if there were, and if it had the abilities you say it does, it would have to be even more capable of correct judgment than people are."

Helen laughs a little wildly. "Oh, Dani. How can you say that people are capable of good judgment?"

"I didn't say 'good,'" Dani answers. "I said 'correct.' And we know they are, because Earth's still here, and so are we. A theory can be demonstrated to be true if you can provide even one example, you know. We're not talking about a statistical preponderance of rationality here. Just an example proof. So I think I'm right. You did the right things for the right reasons, and they were good things."

"I can't keep doing them," Helen says. "I don't believe any more."

Dani grins at her and Helen looks startled. "But you have to," Dani says reasonably. "By your own rules, your own existence and actions are proof of God."

Helen stares at her for a moment, thinking it through. If she had not believed what she'd believed, she would not have done what she'd done. Therefore, because her beliefs have caused her to do good things, the universe is governed by a good God. When she gets to the other end, she starts to laugh. It ends in tears, of course, but Dani's expecting that.

"You'd have made an excellent Sophist, you know," Helen says, when she's worked her way through half a box of Kleenex.

"I _am_ an excellent Sophist. Ask anyone," Dani answers. Then she sends Helen home and tells her to do something wild and crazy, like attend Vespers.

When Helen's safely gone, she shuts her door and _shakes_ , because just who the fuck do you call for help when the Parish Priest (okay, Helen isn't Catholic, still,) is starting to crack?

#


End file.
